Baby boomer generation have failed their children, David Willetts says

The “baby boomer” generation have squandered their wealth and failed to save
for future generations, creating a burden that has broken society, a senior
Tory has claimed.

David Willetts said the post war generation has benefitted from huge wealthPhoto: EDDIE MULHOLLAND

By Richard Edwards

7:30AM GMT 18 Jan 2010

David Willetts, the shadow universities and skills secretary, said that the post-war generation of “boomers” have been guilty of a “monumental failure” to protect the future of their children.

In a new book, ‘How the Baby Boomers Stole Their Children's Futures’, he said that pensions schemes and property booms have concentrated wealth and power in the boomer generation, and encouraged by the government and banks, “they borrowed as if there were no tomorrow”.

However personal saving rates – the amount saved as a percentage of disposable income – have gone into the negative.

“[That is] almost unprecedented for any large western economy — and that in turn now imposes a heavy burden on their children,” Mr Willets said.

“A young person could be forgiven for believing that the way in which economic and social policy is now conducted is little less than a conspiracy by the middle-aged against the young”.

The Tory MP claimed it was as if the older generation has been throwing a party and leaving a mess for the next generation to sort out.

“I do not believe that this is because the boomers are unusually bad and selfish,” he said. “I think it is rather that we have lost sight of the importance of the contract between the generations that holds any society together.

“The breaking of this contract is above all what is broken about our society.”

Mr Willetts also said that the “boomers should worry too”.

“The repercussions affect everyone. For if it is far harder for the young to get started on the housing ladder, to find a job or to save for the future, they are more dependent on their parents for longer. That in turn means new barriers to the spread of ownership and opportunity: indeed it threatens social mobility altogether”.

Mr Willets said that there are 17 million people in the boomer generation, born between 1945 and 1965.

“Now they are getting old, the bills are coming in, and it is the younger generations who will pay them,” he said.